Overclock
Profile Quote: "What's the point of power if you don't use it?" Speed, throughput, power. Overclock is the mental union of a middle-caste chemist, a low-caste beast, and a bottomless thirst for performance. Having left even her original body behind in her quest, her current frame is an MTO that rarely stays the same from one stellar cycle to another as the femme pushes it to higher and higher limits. Vivacious, competitive, and a little cocky from the heady rush of her own systems, she's prone alternately to bouts of impatience and sloth as her fuel levels rise and fall. Skills: Anything for an Upgrade; Knowledge: Chemistry, claw-to-hand combat; Tracking by taste/smell; Honorary Bug; Skills: Matter-to-Energon Fueling; Languages: Wavespeech. Descs Current Desc ("Overclock", 4/17/15-) Overclock is a dark, looming femme made of racing hardware and bestial attachments. Her body is night black with white and purple accents and, while not hulking, there's a definite athleticism to her build. The femme's torso has a pronounced V-taper as her shoulders stretch wide apart to make room for exhaust manifolds on either side of her chest while her waist draw sharply together to hug an armoured radiator that makes up her abdomen. Overlaying her back, sides, and joints are shifting metal plates that sheathe almost-exposed pistons and actuators - an anatomy chart in motion - and vents cover the rest keeping her hungry internals supplied with plenty of air. The longer sections of Overclock's body have a sleekness to them but smaller ones are jagged, giving her an in-between appearance that's neither the stream-lined curve of a racer nor the blocky strength of a labourer and one further overlaid by a chimeric mix of beastformer and even Insecticon traits. Her hands and feet end in sharp claws, the red-eyed head of a large black hound - her alt-mode - serves as her entire chestplate, and her engine growls with a tone that's more feral than mechanical. A long braided-steel tail extends from her lower back but it curls along armoured joints and the plates that shift across her body are rounded and chitinous. In the center of her helmet where the femme should have a face instead are an opaque red visor and a full face mask. The rebuilt beastformer rumbles with power and radiates with heat, but emits no emotion except through body language and voice. In the dark or under exertion she even glows with waste heat and the smells of spent fuel and hot metal wash from her onto the passing breeze. Current Desc ("Overclock" alt-mode, 4/17/15-) Standing no smaller than her root form, Overclock's alt-mode is a chimeric hound coloured black with white and purple accents. Bestial, brawny, and freely exhausting air through open pipes in her sides, her frame is clearly built for performance but at the same time it seems forged under a mishmash of rules. Chitinous metal plates shift over barely-concealed pistons and actuators and the whole of her body rumbles with the force of her motors, giving her a visage somewhere between beastformer, Insecticon, and racer. The femme's face is expressive if menacing with red lenses and a fanged maw that glows with an inner heat, and a steel-braided tail curls overhead along armoured joints, ending in a stinging point. Not the quietest nor the best cooled Cybertronian, Overclock passively howls with the force of air being sucked through her systems and even idle her barely-covered motors are warm to the touch. In the dark or under exertion, the femme's body even glows with waste heat and after a particularly satiating meal, dark smoke can be seen wafting out her vents. Second Desc ("Bloodhound", 3/8/15-4/17/15) Technical but athletic, broad-shouldered but lithe, ponderous but agile, Spectrum's frame is atypical of both her namesake and her alt-mode. Featuring a broad and fairly boxy chest that dominates her appearance, the femme's scientific roots can be spotted not just in the lack of wings or tires but also in the ergonomic contour of her helmet, the careful rounding of her sides, and the clean white paint that adorns most of her figure. The figure itself and the sharp brown lines that stripe it paint a different picture. At once svelte and sturdy, her waist and limbs narrow sharply in contrast to her chest plates and the joints of her body show just enough reinforcing to support speedy movement without excess weight - and perhaps a little more to be sure. The armor of her arms and legs show more than a passing thought to durability and sharp claws that end each fingertip give the femme a distinctly combative appearance. On her back, a pair of vented boosters fan open and closed, ready to make up for any maneuvering short-comings. Spectrum may have at one point been a scienceformer, but she's clearly been modified to handle the rigors of a more active life. Original Desc ("Scrapheap", 3/4/15 - 3/8/15) Spectrum looks like most other beings living in the Dead End; battered, short on parts, and missing most of her paint. A relatively slender cybertronian of modest height, armor is either completely missing over most of her body or it's been welded back together with scrap too many times to be identifiable. It's hard to tell if she's even a femme and harder still to guess her alt-mode. The left side of her face is scored by plasma and her optic on the same side is cracked, bare circuits and motors are exposed down the length of both arms, and wires can be traced from her chestplate all the way to her knee joints. A rare glimpse of orderly paneling, Spectrum's upper torso seems to be the only part in any real repair. It presents an unflatteringly boxy outline that makes her look even thinner but a pump on its underside hums defiantly with life. Despite the scale of her damages, her critical systems are in deceptively better health; the damaged robot has been getting cut-rate repairs for a long time. Bearings and gaskets are still functionally clean and even if her inner workings are exposed, they're still working; her gait, while the slow, ponderous pace endemic to empties, is smooth; and a large blade swings at her side as she walks. It's a piece of loose metal that's been welded directly to the last bit of paneling on her right arm and sharpened to a usable edge - an improvised weapon at best but by no means harmless. Relationships History Backstory The beginning of Overclock's life was innocuous but damning. Originally known as the mech Spectrum, she was a scienceformer with a particular talent for chemistry. After completing primary programming school and the technoversity with promising marks, he was assigned to the demanding but sheltered post of a lab assistant in mentorship to Chromate, one of the Institute's many pharmacologists. Working in concert with mnemosurgeons, the focus of Chromate's work was Project Tandem, an attempt at one of the medical holy grails: lasting, illness-free personality grafts. If successful it would allow them to 'clone' more desirable minds over dissidents and other unwanteds, instilling the loyalty of a police officer into a miner or imparting the intelligence of top minds upon generations of sparks. The test subject for this project was Bloodhound, a former Vanguard beastformer who'd rebelled against the organization's disbanding. For her protests she'd been imprisoned and then quietly transferred to the Institute. Unwilling but drugged into a harmless degree of compliance, Spectrum quickly came to know every major facet of her frame, personality, and of course, her medical schedule. A fresh protoform himself, the idealistic mech had little conception of the unethical work he was furthering, at least in the beginning. As Chromate's promising young apprentice, he was also chosen to be experiment's donor mind with his memories repeatedly read and copied into Bloodhound as part of the experiments. Early results from Project Tandem were a complete failure with Bloodhound either rejecting Spectrum's memories or simply being confused by them. In a bid to ease the transition, Spectrum volunteered to have the same process performed on him, the intent being to then remove Bloodhound's portion once the femme herself was successfully altered. The results of Spectrum's naivety were even worse and the repeated intrusion of one another's memories caused a collapse of both of their identities rather than the lasting personality changes Chromate was looking for. Further research was interrupted when their lab was raided during the early discoveries of Institute facilities on Cybertron. Chromate was killed in the raid but Spectrum and Bloodhound managed to escape. Tainted - or rather enlightened by Bloodhound's perspective on the Institute - Spectrum hid with her in the Dead End to avoid recapture rather than retreating to another facility. Over time the pair managed to reconstruct a semblance of their identities and, though haunted by various maladies from the experiments, looked after one another's basic needs. Bloodhound's old skills from the Vanguard as a hunter and tracker were put to use scavenging while Spectrum used his chemistry knowledge to adapt street drugs into usable suppressors for their illnesses. Towards the end of Sentinel's reign, Bloodhound died, a casualty of an energon theft gone wrong, and her death left Spectrum cast adrift. Without both his protector and charge, the former chemist sought to replace the femme he'd lost and finish rebuilding himself despite lacking Bloodhound's grounding influence. In defiance of her perceived incompleteness, Spectrum set herself to upgrading her scientific frame to equal the beastformer she'd lost. In practice of course she had few resources and little experience in frame engineering, leaving her changes more cosmetic than functional. Seeking a solution in spite of her criminal status, Spectrum knew she'd need a mechanic skilled enough to perform military upgrades, as Bloodhound had a military frame if an aged one; a way to ingratiate one with service or shanix; and a way to find one who would do all of this illegally. As she was never particularly wealthy nor trusting of anyone who would do an illegal reformat for coins, the answer became obvious. Spectrum needed a mechanic with a loyalty she could rely on and a shared loyalty could be used as her currency. Enter her search for the Decepticons, the most likely criminal group in her mind to have the mix of brains and bearings she needed. Sentinel Age Spectrum saved up enough shanix to leave the Dead End, with help from free repairs by Pharma, and got to know the competing ideologies of the day. She determined in short order that while she liked the Decepticon ideal she didn't trust them as far as she could throw Buzzsaw. After meeting Pharma, she didn't trust the Autobots at all... A chance encounter with Soundwave as her recruiter lead at first cautiously to a friendship. By the end of the age with Sentinel dead by Megatron, the blue carrier was counted as Spectrum's only friend and the only mech she trusted besides. As the curtain closed with war brewing, she snuck off to Stanix to complete a deal with Scorn that traded Detour's identity for a new frame. Zeta Age Overclock was hatched during the later years of Zeta's reign as a de facto member of Cybertron's largest surface hive. She wasted no time in integrating into life with her fellow bugs, subordinate to Scorn (her queen) and Kickback (a leading seeder), but just as quickly displayed a penchant for rash behaviour and over-estimating the capabilities of her own frame. Nyon's obliteration was a megavolt shock to the young femme's systems that disabused her of any belief in Zeta's righteousness as Prime and lead Overclock directly to the Decepticons. Together with a near-scrapping from Hun-Grr, it also helped to foster a growing sense of inadequacy and incompleteness in the young Insecticon, which has already begun to lead her down a strange path. Now a proud member andsomewhat uncomfortably) Shockwave's direct subordinate, Overclock is ready to put her skills to use however she can in the times ahead - while keeping one optic open for chances to improve herself in the process. Gallery MS Paint Fun Cook Kirby by Cheese is tasty.png|Spectrum on a normal day in the Dead End (@2010-2015 Cheese-is-tasty) Overclock.jpg|On some days Overclock just can't be bothered to wear her armor (©2011-2015 mazenahmed)|link=http://mazenahmed.deviantart.com/art/Hot-Rod-Hemi-Engine-WIP-201329445 Sheet Overclock (v3, Blame Scorn) Bloodhound (v2, Blame Pharma) Spectrum (v1) Logs